Technology is constantly evolving. What exciting developments can we expect to see in coming years? Based on the findings of a white paper by our parent company, NTT DATA, this four-part blog series delves into the eight trends that will have the biggest influence on our personal and working lives.

Previously, we looked at symbiosis with artificial intelligence and autonomous mobility. This time, we provide an insight into ambient commerce and distributed mesh computing.

Trend 5: Ambient Commerce

E-commerce has transformed the modern shopping experience. It combines finding, purchasing, and receiving a product into one smooth process. Already worth $1.3 trillion in 2014, the global e-commerce market is expected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2018. With its popularity on the rise, the technology is set to become even more intelligent, too.

Quicker and More Accurate

Personalized recommendations are a standard feature in online shopping, yet they are often irrelevant, resulting in wasted sales opportunities and a negative customer experience. Recent advancements are helping to enhance the accuracy and service of e-marketing.

Artificial intelligence is playing a decisive role in the optimization of e-commerce platforms. Applications based on AI are able to learn an individual’s style preferences, offering them appropriate, tailor-made recommendations. Furthermore, by enabling shoppers to place orders via an SMS or tweet, AI speeds up e-commerce processes and boosts conversion rates.

Tapping into Grey Matter

Maximizing the reach and efficacy of advertising campaigns is also a key focus. In the past, this relied on capturing public opinion in questionnaires. NTT DATA and the Center for Information and Neural Networks have devised a more scientific solution—measuring brain activity using neural decoding technology. With this method, organizations can collect and analyze nonverbal information to enhance their understanding of consumer behavior.

Trend 6:Distributed Mesh Computing

Since its release in 2009, Bitcoin’s value has increased significantly—from 6 cents to $400. The virtual currency has been gaining popularity, too, and is today used in more than 200,000 transactions per day. Yet the system has never experienced downtime. The technology behind its impressive reliability is blockchain, a distributed database that is changing the way we make virtual transactions. But how else could it influence digital business?

Digital Leaders

Blockchain is a possible driver behind the Internet of Value trend, where currency transfer will become as fast as that of data. Unsurprisingly, banks and financial institutions are leading this revolution, with many now trialing the software. And in 2015, NASDAQ launched its own private securities platform based on the technology.

It is not only custodians of currency implementing this style of computing, however. Enterprises in other sectors, including Airbnb and Uber, are adopting distributed systems to tackle the huge volumes of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). They are able to process information from edge servers placed near IoT devices rather than from one centralized node—enhancing flexibility and scalability.

Another example of distributed architecture is microservices, where complex applications are split into smaller, modular, and yet interconnected pieces. Netflix has successfully deployed this mechanism to support overall viewings, which have grown by a factor of 103 since 2007.

Inspired by Blockchain

NTT DATA is also joining the movement. Through combined research with the Muroran Institute of Technology, the global IT innovator is developing a new content license management system based on blockchain. It will be highly reliable and secure and will support another of NTT’s creations—“Kirari!”, an immersive telepresence technology.

Preview to next post

The fourth and final instalment of the series covers cyber-physical security and engineering innovation.